Toward an Ethospoetics of the Islamic Languages. Re-Reading Multilingualism Along the Silk Road According to Alessandro Bausani – Part I

Abstract In 1966, Alessandro Bausani (1921‑1988), a key scholar of Arabic and Persian studies, introduced the influential paradigm of ʻIslamic Languagesʼ, sparking both skepticism and interest to date. This article, the first of two, uses ideas from Bachelard and Deleuze-Guattari, along with historical sources, to re-read Bausani’s paradigm, focusing on space and mobility along the Silk Road. It argues that shared religious and moral values, more than language itself, drive the flow of ideas in the Muslim ʻdomestic spaceʼ. This ʻethospoeticʼ lens shows how shared imagination forms in multilingual literary contexts, crossing ethnic and linguistic lines. Keywords Multilingualism. Alessandro Bausani. Ethospoetics. Theoretical studies. Muslim domestic space. Sufism. Summary 1 Introduction. – 2 Framing the Islamic Languages’ Space: Domestic, Nomadic, Time-Echoing. – 3 Surfaces and Culture Earthquakes: A Reverberating Sufi Corpus.